posted 02-09- 10:28 PM               

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Well, I found out after the 3rd time of trying why the Snowy Dover terrain wont show up on xoom, they delete it everytime it's finished sending, the log says it's in violation of TOS... .wankers, I read TOS, there's no reason it shouldn't be there, and to delete it after it's taken 1 1/2 hours to send, rather than stopping the transfrer from that start.. boy am I pissed... so until I get some response from the very nice and polite(yeah right) e mail I just sent the webmaster, then the Terrain wont be posted.

Sorry Guys, I've spent a total of 4 1/2 hours now just trying to get this thing posted, thats almost as long as it took to re do the terrain....

Believe me, I aint happy right now...

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posted 02-10- 05:16 AM            

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That is indeed bum stuff Nat.

However, Pete posted this link http://www.freediskspace.com/ for 300mb free; and like he says, its not webspace, but you can give out a password for folks to bag it.
..Long downloads are particularly annoying to those of us with ordinary dial-ups, and xoom is slower than most, this might be your solution.
Which puts me in mind of Jaguar's elegant idea of replacing those megabyte eating tifs with jpg. I don't know if that format would make much difference in essentially simple textures with no red to bleed in them, but with files in hand, you could be the one to find out if this could be the breakthrough deal for terrains. An 80% reduction in download size would make things sweet.

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posted 02-10- 06:59 AM               

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Hey RoadToad, yeah I saw that post from Pete, and went and got some space, there is one draw back though, it seems that if you wanted to get anything from my space, you have to sign on with them as a member, Pete might put me right on this one, but I'm sure I tried using this a long time before I got into SDOE in a big way, so it kinda makes it a pain in the ass. Oh, and I've been talking to Jaguar for a few days now, and have shown him how to make his TIF files about 1/4 the size of the equivelant JPG, so I think you'll find he'll be changing back to TIF's now , I found that on Terrains the origonal TIF' are done in 24 bit color, well as we all know 24 bit is the worst possible setting you could have, 32bit generaly loads faster than 24, but not only that, after a little more checking, there weren't even enough colors being used to warrent the use of 16bit let alone 24 bit, the textures are perfect at 256 colors.. don't groan.. lol, it's true, so I've shown him how to use the batch conversion in Infraview to convert all JPG's to TIF's with Zip compression at 256 colors, it save so much it's unreal, the same textures as JPG took up 37mb, as TIF with zip compression and at 256 colors they take up 14, I really can't see a way to get them any smaller now, I analysed the texturs after conversion and I think I've squeezed all I can out them now.

But anyway, the origonal problem.. xoom has said they will only allow a max upload of 11mb, so I've split the terrain into 2 parts, A and B, the installation is just the same, and it means I've got it up on my site without ppl having to join Freespace. Freespace is a good idea, I just didn't think it a good way for me to distribute, still, as I said, maybe Pete can give some pointers on this, and I'll be looking more at it aswell.

The terrain is now up at my site.. at long long last!!

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posted 02-10- 08:41 AM            

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How grand that you thought of color reduction!
...I'd guess (if you haven't already done it) that reducing water tiles to 64 or 32 (maybe even 16) would chop more bloat as well. Thanks! 15mb is so much better than 40+ !!
..off to xoom now

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